SOURCE: "The Group," in New York Magazine, Vol. 10, No. 50, December 12, 1977, p. 103.

A distinguished American drama and film critic, Simon is the author of Uneasy Stages: A Chronicle of the New York Theatre, 1963–1973 (1976) and Singularities: Essays on the Theatre, 1964–1974 (1976). Here, he contends that Uncommon Women and Others is well-written and enjoyable but adds that the subject matter of the play is too familiar to be especially interesting.

Uncommon Women begins with five Holyoke alumnae meeting in a restaurant six years after graduation. They comment on their respective development or nondevelopment, reminisce about absent friends and foes, and are presently transported back into their college days, only to return to the present at play's end. The prologue-play-epilogue construction is highly conventional, and, indeed, there is nothing uncommon about Uncommon Women and Others. In fact, Miss Wasserstein's problem is a very common one among young playwrights writing memory plays about themselves...